The Lumber Raft
by Ellenka
Summary: We get along like a house on water.
1. I

**A/N: '**Tis a little one-and-a-half-sided Jo/Finn drabble. All ownership disclaimed. Written for Booky's B-day collection some half a year ago, now heavily edited and reposted here. Because editing is easier than writing. Sigh. Enjoy anyway. Hopefully, I'll be back with some irregularly scheduled updates soon.**  
**

* * *

**The Lumber Raft**

Finn is the finest fishy around, but every now and then, even he is in over his head. Drowning. Especially here in the Capitol.

I'm there for him whenever he needs a raft to hold him above the greedy, dirty water. I glady let him cling to me, because that means I can cling to him too, and not feel like a festering splinter for a change.

His breath is like the sea-breeze I got a sniff of during my Victory Tour, just as fresh and intoxicating when it skims my goose-bumped skin. It makes me feel somehow cleaner, whatever we do after.

I could sure get used to that, but I fight the idea for all I'm worth – 'cause what if even he were to be cut away from me, what then, what the hell?! – and so does he, ever the fish swimming through the eyes of the net, refusing to get entangled.

We Victors gotta help each other, but can't afford to get too attached in the process.

We are all caught in a net even the sharpest axe can't cut, even the most skillful-fingered fisherman can't untangle.

All because we'd gripped onto the bait that was our own life a bit too tenaciously.

And we are doomed to pay for our own brainlessness forever.

* * *

This year, my poor little logs already got hacked to pieces days ago, and now there's another fishy swimming just above the gaping eyes of the net.

A fishy Finn obviously cares about a whole damn lot.

A wisp of a girl, with eyes as green as the sea, dark hair hanging limply across her face like dark sea-weed, or so he says. Finn knows her, both from before and from after, he's told me as much; and now he watches her like she wasn't a raft, but a buoy, or a lighthouse, or whatever the hell they have floating around back in Four.

Whatever it is that leads stray sailors home.

Maybe he doesn't even know it himself, but if she sinks, he might as well sink too. Or keep swimming stomach up, with stinking dead-white scales flashing in the strobe-lights of the Capitol.

I couldn't help him after that, not really.

I can rock his boat alright, but I guess she can float it like the calm sunset-tinged waves he keeps going on about when he gets just high enough to be sentimental.

She might be what he really needs to sail on.

I move over to where he watches her on his monitor, all heartwreck and anxiety, and put my arms around him, pressing myself against his back with my feet rooted firmly on the ground to anchor him.

He reaches up.

Fingers coarse from having tied a zillion knots caress mine - rough from axe-handles I've been holding onto for last bits of sanity ever since the Capitol had robbed me of my proud pre-Games calluses.

"Thanks, Jo," he mutters and holds on tight, floating, floating, his eyes drinking her in, her and only her.

* * *

She doesn't drown, but just barely.

They pull her out – the last one afloat – and my pretty drowning fishy stops gaping and finally breathes in again.

I don't pull away, not even after that, and neither does he, but that doesn't matter, he's far away from me as it is.

* * *

I don't know what the future holds for them, not in this screwed-up net where she'd just joined us.

All I know is that I'll do my damn best whenever they need a raft.

* * *

Brainless, Jo. You live as you died, brainless all the fucking time. But I'd rather be that than hearless, or so I tell myself.


	2. II

Yeah, I guess I'm best at updating "complete" stories. Just needed to spit out some random angst, and Johanna was there to help. Sorry.

* * *

**The Living Raft**

I fucking hate water.

It brings memories of torture, which means pain. It brings memories of Finnick, which means even worse pain.

It doesn't care at all.

Sunlight twinkles on eye-green waves, forever moving, forever flowing, forever alive. How dare they, when _he_'s forever DEAD?

I thought I'd lost him when Annie fished herself out of her arena. I thought I'd lost him twice over when she huddled under a traditional net with him and they sealed their wedding wows with a saltwater kiss.

But that's all nothing compared to now. Now that we've _both _lost him, now that the whole damn world has lost him.

In some filthy foul sewer, while the Mockingjay and her feather-assed bunch supposedly couldn't have helped.

Bullshit.

I should have been there, to help him, to save him, to die with him. But I wasn't, because of fucking _water_.

On impulse, I lift my ax over my head and bring it down to where the frothy surf meets the sand. My yell of frustration goes unnoticed in the eternal crash of waves.

Wet drops splash on my legs and I cringe away as if burned.

The water doesn't care.

The axwound disappears as if it's never been there – after all, it hasn't, I can't even wound a damn _ocean_. The slight indent in the sand takes a moment to heal, one two three waves and it's gone.

No scar, no _nothing_.

A bark of laughter escapes me, but no tears, no, that would be just more gross salty _water_.

Not even a scar. Unless I threw myself in, what am I but a scar?

Ugh, better not dwell on that.

I shoulder the ax and the bit of driftwood I managed to find (not that I ever found enough to need the ax for, but an excuse is an excuse, right?), and make my way back to Annie.

* * *

She goes looking for him in ocean too, I know that and she knows I do the same, but we never go together.

* * *

When she announced she wanted to return _home_, widowed and pregnant and broken and all, I went with her. I hardly had anything to pack, just the bag of bones I've become, and she seemed more than okay with taking me along.

Is she something I have left from Finn? Do I mean the same for her?

Sometimes I wonder which one of us crazier. As if it mattered.

I need somebody who'd need me.

Or do I need a living reminder, just to torture myself?

* * *

A part of Finn is inside Annie, swimming, swimming. I can already feel him move in there whenever she quietly hugs me and I just as quietly _let _her do it. Her protruding stomach seems to fit right into the hollow under my ribcage, and Finn is there between us.

Dividing us? Uniting us? Both?

He'd been inside me countless times, damn, probably more times than inside her if we counted, but he never left anything tangible and sentient.

We couldn't have afforded that, and he and Annie couldn't have either, not until he'd hauled his pretty ass home from the war, _alive_. But they did anyway, the idiots, and now he's dead and alive too.

Alive in Annie. Not in me.

Then why the hell do I feel like there was a piece of him stuck inside me, _kicking hard_?

* * *

The phantom memory hurts like a splinter embedded too deep, but I'm afraid to leave and cut it out. So I stay.

For a tiny _living_ kick in the ribs, from another body?

Perhaps.

_Brainless as always, Jo_, I tell myself.

Stubborn too.

* * *

I thought I'd never panic again, ever, after all, why the hell would I?

But when Annie goes into slightly premature labor, I do.

Her waters break like a dam and I damn nearly get both of us killed when I drive us to the hospital, with the screeching of wheels and a steady stream of curses on my breath.

* * *

She's stronger than she looks, always has been, I guess.

The bones in my hand nearly crack under the pressure of her pain. (I'm there holding her hand, of-fucking-course, after all, what else do we have left?)

I'm choking under my ridiculous surgical mask, my breath almost as heavy as hers. I'm too used to the screams and pain of death, and I thought I'd seen and felt every torture, but the new life emerging in its gory glory still somehow manages to freak the hell outta me.

Annie swims in sweat, our hands glued slickly together for hours hours hours until the Little Fishy slides out in a fountain of blood.

Draws breath and screams.

Not fishlike, that, but the nickname'll stick, no doubt.

* * *

Pale as a ghost, but glowing, Annie holds her healthy little Finn-eyed bundle of life.

Delivered my Mommy Mockingjay herself. Who'd have thought?

* * *

Soon we go back to the waves; the fuckers are still as alive as I am dead inside.

Annie doesn't go to look at them alone anymore, she's no longer trying to see someone beyond them. She has their salty lookalikes in baby Finn's eyes, the water that keeps her from drowning.

When she smiles at me over the top of his tiny head, I do my best to bare my teeth in response.

She doesn't need me to hold her up anymore.

* * *

The baby does it alright, even though he can't stand on his own legs yet. But he can wriggle them in the sunlight and salty spray, laughing, laughing.

After all, he bears no scars he knows of yet, and the waves twinkle in his own eyes, not in a haunting gaze from memory.

To him, the ocean sings, it doesn't buzz with electric pain.

He's new to a world we grew old beyond our years to salvage. Living.

And I'm still threading carefully not to get my feet wet. Salvaging, driftwood, as always.

* * *

Maybe, when it's time for the Little Fishy to learn how to swim, I'll go with him.

And maybe, he'd hold me up as well.


End file.
